Two items here, and I decided to combine them in one post, although they aren’t related to each other. First, as Presto noted, we have “Lord British Sues”.

His departure from NCsoft wasn’t “voluntary”. According to the suit filed yesterday, he was fired. The main point of contention is the stock option agreement made when NCsoft acquired Destination Games in 2001.

There was a difference in the option period depending on whether Richard was dismissed or left voluntarily. If fired, he had until June 2011 to exercise his options. But if he resigned, he had only 90 days.

The suit alleges that the firing was “re-characterized as voluntary”, forcing Lord B. to exercise his options early, and thereby causing him to lose a lot of money.

NCsoft, as expected, is saying “no comment” at the moment. It will be interesting to see what they do say when they respond to the suit.

Our second item deals with a MMOG, Darkfall Online. It was the subject of a vitriolic review by Ed Zitron on Eurogamer, receiving a terrible score of 2/10.

Aventurine protested the piece strongly, claiming their logs showed Zitron played DF for a little more than two hours. Zitron, in turn, disputes that, saying he played for much longer.

So who’s right? Not easy to say. However, wading through various posts on the DF forums, it is clear that there are a number of inaccuracies in the review. That does not reflect well on the credibility of the piece.

No one is perfect, and I’ve made a gaffe or two in my time. However, certainly nowhere as many as have been pointed out on the boards. If nothing else, it appears the reviewer wasn’t paying much attention to anything in the game.

For awhile, there was a standoff between Aventurine, who wanted the review pulled, and Eurogamer, who are keeping it up. Now, though, Eurogamer will have a second person take a look at the game, and do up another review.

Y’know, reviewing a MMOG has to be tough. Because they’re endless, just a few hours in the game isn’t really sufficient to obtain a good picture. If I were doing a MMOG review, I’d certainly want to put in as much time as I would for a single-player game.

In any case, the question is whether the second reviewer (Kieron Gillen) will be able to make a fair assessment, given the current outburst. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be in his place right now.

I had some friends in similar situations in 2001 during the .com downturn. Their stock options were offered when the stock was riding high, after the tech downturn the options were for more than current stock price. Not only that, but the IRS was taxing it as a benefit and only took into account the original value, not the current.

The thing that amazes me is that they would try to write and pass off a forged goodbye letter from Richard.

Re, MMORPG review, if that is true then it would make me wary of using EuroGamer as a trusted review source. I would tend to believe Adventurine since they have the sever logs to back it up. It sounds like a lot of complaints are with the mechanics. He didn’t like having to open your inventory bag and drag something to it when you are looting a corpse. To me, that makes sense, it’s what would be required in reality. The “Take All” button in most MMORPGs is more expedient though. He complained about having to stop moving to interact with the map or inventory. WoW lets you keep going but many other games do not. I get the impression that since the game doesn’t do things the same way as others, it’s no good. That’s why developers don’t want to innovate, any change to the status quo is going to be met with resistance from somebody.

So far, the only Metacritic and GameRanking reviews are from Eurogamer, so we will see what the other say. On MC the user ratings are 6.2

Of note regarding Darkfall Online is its sponsorship of Clichequest, AKA The Noob Comic. I enjoy the comic and occasionally find it quite funny. The relationship between the comic and Darkfall Online is interesting since Gianna, the author of the comic, was in the beta and posted a number of previews, all quite positive.

Presto, I never count hours, only days. A game usually takes me 1-2 weeks. So figure at least a week in a MMOG before I’d consider a review. Of course, as I don’t play MMOGs, this is just hypothetical. But that would be my approach.

Xian, according to Gamasutra, Richard “approved” the letter, although it seems he didn’t write it himself. Regarding DF, the reviewer also complained about being ganked. Which is what you expect to happen in a game billed as “PvP”.

And yes, it was obvious from the comments on the boards that DF still has some problems to work out.

“I had some friends in similar situations in 2001 during the .com downturn. Their stock options were offered when the stock was riding high, after the tech downturn the options were for more than current stock price. Not only that, but the IRS was taxing it as a benefit and only took into account the original value, not the current.”

I’m not sure what kind of options your friends had, but generally options themselves aren’t taxed. The money gotten from the sale of the associated stock once the option is exercised is taxed.

It will indeed be interesting to see NCSofts side of this story. It sounds very underhanded, and regardless of how TR did as a game or how he functioned as an employee, the company can’t turn a firing into something else after the fact.

I don’t see Lord British winning the suit. Employers usually include some sort of clause so that they can drop you like a hot potato at any moment. Not that it matters to LB. He’s a millionaire, and has a mansion and a yacht(just a little Bugs Bunny thrown in there).

Darkbridger, it depends on the type of options. I believe that they got a NSSO instead of the more common ISO type.

A non-statutory stock option program is easier to set up and administer than an incentive stock option, however, taxes must be paid on the non-qualified stock options, while taxes do not have to be paid on incentive stock options. Also called non-qualified stock options.

Years ago, I (& 4 others) reviewed a series of brand name printers for a major pc magazine. We all gave scathing reviews. The manufacturer threatened to pull its ads. A few weeks later, we were all called back in and told to review what amounted to ‘version X+’ of the same printers. Granted many of the original gaffes were gone, but the editorial pressure was such that we knew we were in a hot seat.

Tumbleweed: Initially, there were firewalls, but when the mag started weighing some 5 lbs/issue, they crumbled. Best was when editors began cutting my copy to fit, and the end result seemed as though I knew not of what I spoke. (someone mention possible lawsuit?? :) )

The only mag I ever reviewed for that had no contact with advertisers was Consumer Reports…but gawd they wanted me to supply them with citations for ‘gigabyte’, etc. :(